With the Science and Technology Committee currently, and with a slight air of desperation, trying to work out a way to persuade the public that the IPCC is trustworthy, it's amusing to see government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport and his three illustrious (and not so illustrious) predecessors writing to the Times today, apparently with the same aim. The article is paywalled, but it's mostly just a recitation of the AGW mantra, with much mention of the empty "consensus".

This is the bit where they explain why we should be getting worried:

It is widely expected that the panel’s fifth assessment report on the physical science basis of climate change, which will be published later this month, will present even greater confidence in the evidence that the climate is warming as a result of human activities.

And therein lies the problem. The models have failed, utterly, completely and catastrophically to predict the halt in temperature rises. That we should then be expected to accept "even greater confidence" about conclusions drawn from them is risible nonsense. This kind of spin is exactly the kind of thing one has come to expect from government chief scientific advisers and the climate establishment and is precisely why people are distrustful of their public utterances.

Excellent post Andrew, if I may quibble, "distrustful" - rather a polite understatement.

People, [if they ever did] now quite correctly disbelieve [in CAGW] - in any and all of their [Science and Technology Committee] unqualified pronouncements. No shoring up by the government, its Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport will ever be sufficient - to placate a deeply sceptical public and rightly so. The 'genie' of the global warming scam and its ever expanding puffery; of lies, bad science and woeful models - has grown far too big and will never again be put back in its bottle.

It really needs pointing out that the lack of warming, for such a significant period of time, already falsifies the IPCC models. At least similar evidence, taken with the many failed predictions of catastrophic weather, would be enough for falsification in every other branch of science. Why should climate science be treated differently?

Evidence is not something abstract. It doesn't call for confidence. Either there is evidence or there is not evidence. This doesn't sound like the writing of scientists, more like the writing of a group of desperate propagandists.

Why stop at The Times as any number of major newspapers could be addressed? But the key is who should write the letter. For me a joint effort from Montford, Watts, McIntyre, Curry etc would be most powerful, especially if it brought together succinct arguments from this and the adjacent thread ('Dialing back the alarm') arguing that the science is not robust, and certainly not robust enough on which to base policies 'to fight climate change'.

It's quite simple. We're supposed to believe what authorities like the Chief Scientific Adviser tell us. We're supposed to believe whatever they tell us. After all, lots of people do.

Perhaps they should give each other more impressive titles. Like Big Chief Scientific Adviser. Or Very Big Chief Scientific Adviser. Or Extra Super Chief Scientific Adviser. And award each other not just Nobel Prizes, but Super Extra Mega Nobel Prizes with Knobs On.

The online Guardian environment section has news of a briefing by the Met Office on how they are improving their climate models. It is not clear whether this warmist -speak is Guardian propaganda or original Met Office propaganda. It is interesting that the two have become quite indistinguishable, even though one is fanatical about climate activism and prepared to publish any old rubbish and the other is, well,...

It so happens I wrote to my MP this am on the very subject of AR5. This time I attached the useful article (Pigs in a Poke) by Dr Ball in WUWT on how previous ARs have failed and a link to the YouTube preview of Bob Tisdale`s forthcoming book Climate Models Fail (also via WUWT).

I pointed out that the Climate Change Act, and related measures were useless and ineffective except in so far as they imposed unnecessary and unaffordable costs on families. They also misdirected scarce investment through foolish subsidies in schemes which only served to line the pockets of of those that promoted and invested in such schemes. The CCA was based on the failed and false premise of CAGW; it should be suspended/repealed forthwith. I concluded by pointing out that the Australian electorate had seen the light and had a elected a government that will get rid of similar legislation.

Anyway - back in Realityland - either there is 'evidence', or there isn't. No amount of 'confidence' trumps 'evidence'.

Also - re: Chief Scientific Adviser; Little Chief Scientific Adviser, etc - anyone noticed how many 'Ministers' there are now - all on £100000 a year..? Had you previously heard of any of them, until they put in an appearance on the telly..?

... even greater confidence in the evidence that the climate is warming as a result of human activities.

What? I thought this part was meant to be so absolutely 100% totally certain that the world's energy supply must be subject to radical central planning by career bureaucrats with connections to the renewables industry, and anyone who remotely doubts it can be refered to with dehumanising labels and subjected to abuse by hate-filled zealots who frequent certain blogs with the sole purpose of spitting bile at other commenters.

The only scientists who aspire to "Chief Government Scientist" are those who have passed their (often very high) peaks of achievement and now see a place in the House of Lords as a fitting end to a distinguished career.

“Combating” climate change is much like the EU – to justify its existence, a large number of people are employed at great expense to the tax-payer to explain why they should be employed to justify why climate change has to be combatted, else there would be no reason to employ cast numbers of people at great expense to the tax-payer to justify why climate change needs to be combatted. Of that, they can be 95% certain, and if the facts do not agree with the idea, then that is a failure of the facts.

And, like the EU, they are unable to see that 95% of the tax-paying population can see right through them, and wish it to stop. Also, like the EU, in the off-chance that they did notice the 95%, you can be 99% certain that the 95% would be ignored as irrelevant. I am 100% sure that 97% of you would agree.

I rather think we are seeing the last agonal gasp of climate alarmism before retreat. Five to ten years ago, there was less evidence against CAGW and it seemed a more tenable hypothesis.

Tony Abbott made a seminal, robust Australian pronouncement on CAGW which really equated to rejecting the indefensible. I expect that in the next few years more politicians will follow suit as they realise that 97% (or 99% according to Barroso) of scientists don't have all the answers and science is science, not certainty.

@AlecM."This cooling is probably from the PID control system in the atmosphere." Proportional integral derivative controller - I seem to remember that you gave me a hard time about feedback systems having to be represented as at least a 2nd order differential equation. Since you state that you are an experienced control theorist, I would be really interested to see how you reconcile this with your previous comments to me.

Matt Ridley with glimmers of hope that just maybe the IPCC balloon is running out of hot air and starting to come back down to Earth.See his article in " The Wall Street Journal " , ' Dialing back the alarm on climate change ' 13th Sept 2013http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

Political confidence has a strange habit of increasing to the level of 'every', ''full', 'absolute', or 'complete', shortly before the subject of the confidence is found to be entirely undeserving of it.

There was also much whingeing about how "extreme opponents of the conclusions of climate-change science denigrate both the science and and the scientists involved". My readings of the various blogs on both sides of the argument has led me to s throng impression that far more invective is thrown at the sceptic camp by the proponents off AGW than vice versa. Is the term 'warmist' really as defamatory as 'denialist'?

Leaving aside the energy issue and the costs of the various subsidies given to renewables, what about tax on petrol?

Petrol carries with it very high tax which has been set on the basis that it is required to combat the environmental damage caused by the consumption of petrol. If in fact (given the introduction of relatively clean fuels with low lead low sulphur and catolytic converters etc ) there is little environmental harm, how can this high level of taxation be justified? Why should petrol carry with it anything more than just ordinary sales tax?

This is a substantial earner for governments and if CAGW falls apart, citizens will be damanding that this additional tax (and of course equivalent air line tariff) be scaled back if not abolished altogether. This will wreak havoc on big government spending. It is easy to see that this is an issue to big to be allowed to fail.

RC, Judy did a piece on it in late August at http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling/

An excerpt:

"I’m not sure how good my eyeball estimates are, and you can pick other start/end dates. But no matter what, I am coming up with natural internal variability associated accounting for significantly MORE than half of the observed warming."